child and a Madonna

The BBC's Have you Say forum is evidence that Madonna's visit to Malawi certainly kicked up a range of public opinion. If news reports are accurate, she has now adopted David, a one year old boy, whose mother died following childbirth and who was being cared for at an Orphan Care Centre.

The boy's father has been quoted as saying, "I am very very happy because as you can see there is poverty in this village and I know he will be very well looked after in America."

So what gives? Good thing or bad? Should she remove a child from the culture that gave him his identify? I know nothing about the specific conditions of poverty his father lived under but average life expectancy for a Malawi male is 40 years, compare this to 74 in the U.S. That he'll get opportunity and education in the west, there can be no doubt but there isn't enough information to form an opinion on how his quality of life might compare to that in the village of his birth. He'll certainly have a momentous struggle to achieve an independent and normal life under the umbrella of such celebrity parenthood. And what when he returns to visit his father and his birth culture?

Of the person behind Madonna I have no thought at all. No liking, no animosity, how can I have any of these things for someone I don't know? What "Madonna" is, is a product, a trademark for an industry, a very carefully polished screenplay and performance, intended to achieve a very specific end. Quite what was her end here, I wonder?

But she has satisfied the boy's father and the Malawi legal system. Perhaps there's sufficient benefit from the media exposure Malawi has had in the past few days, another reminder of Africa's poverty. Yes, I know that tomorrow everyone will forget about the place, about Mchinji and it's Hope Orphan Care Centre, about Yohane Banda, the father, about his dead wife, Marita. But even a couple of days of media exposure can help generate charity funding that would otherwise have been less.

How do you measure that against the upheaval of one life?